May 2006 - Installer-dev - lists.apple.com

Minor bug in SplitForks
by Stéphane Sudre 26 May '06

26 May '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com "/Volumes/toto is not on a hfs volume" Maybe the reported error could instead be: "/Volumes/toto does not exist" or something similar. My $0.02 _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… I tend to believe there is a little minor bug in the latest version of SplitForks. If you try to run SplitForks on a file that just does not exist (for instance: /Volumes/toto), the error reported is: which AFAIK is the error message returned by the statfs portion of code made to ensure that we're running on a HFS or extended HFS volume. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

1 0

SplitForks limitations?
by Stéphane Sudre 25 May '06

25 May '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com - Macintosh File Info (I'm thinking about the Locked flag) - Comments They are not currently saved as far as I can tell. _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… >From what I'm reading about the Apple Double Format (the format for the ._ files created by SplitForks), the following information could be part of the resulting ._ files: Is this a known limitation or is there a reason why this information could not be saved? I'm also interesting in knowing whether this is important or not that the ._ file last modification date is different from the original file (whose date is not modified even though its resource fork is getting terminated in the process). This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

1 0

Re: When did package become relocatable independently?
by Christopher Ryan 25 May '06

25 May '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Chris Is it a new feature of 10.4 or was it introduced in a 10.4.x update? _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/ryanc%40apple.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… This is a new feature in 10.4. It is just that PackageMaker didn't support it until now. The independent relocation is actually per choice (for distributions). Some of Apple's Pro Apps use this feature so that they can require to be installed on the system volume be relocate the large data files to a data volume. While checking the new version of PackageMaker of XCode 2.3 (and filing bugs, I'm afraid), it's come to my attention that packages are now independently relocatable. This email sent to ryanc(a)apple.com This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

1 0

When did package become relocatable independently?
by Stéphane Sudre 25 May '06

25 May '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Is it a new feature of 10.4 or was it introduced in a 10.4.x update? _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… While checking the new version of PackageMaker of XCode 2.3 (and filing bugs, I'm afraid), it's come to my attention that packages are now independently relocatable. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

1 0

Preserving setuid bit in compressed archives
by Andrei Tarassov 24 May '06

24 May '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Thread-index: AcZ/SvA1oP55kWZORzOeGjtG5vRBrA== Thread-topic: Preserving setuid bit in compressed archives Hi! I've encountered a strange problem on Mac 10.4.6: when I create a package that contains a compressed archive of files (i.e. Archive.pax.gz), the setuid bit for the installed files is NOT preserved. However, when I use a non-compressed archive (i.e. Archive.pax), the setuid IS preserved. Has anybody run across the same issue and found a work-around for it? Thanks, -- ANDREI TARASSOV Software Engineer III Altiris OÜ _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

1 0

postflight fails in 10.2.8
by Andy Cave 24 May '06

24 May '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Organization: Hamillroad Software Hi All, So I'm pretty sure the script is fine (it just creates a Desktop alias). Thanks, Andy. Andy Cave, Hamillroad Software Limited. _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… I have a simple postflight script in a package I've made. If I run this under 10.3.9 or 10.4.6 it works fine. Under 10.2.8 it gives an error about problems with the install (and the install fails). If I rename postflight to postinstall and also copy it to postupgrade, it works as expected (under 10.2.8 as well as 10.3.9 and 10.4.6). I tried replacing my script with one that just opens Preview.app and that has the same problem too. Anyone any ideas? I really would like my installer to work on 10.2, 10.3 & 10.4. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

1 0

postflight fails in 10.2.8
by Andy Cave 24 May '06

24 May '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Organization: Hamillroad Software Hi All, So I'm pretty sure the script is fine (it just creates a Desktop alias). Thanks, Andy. Andy Cave, Hamillroad Software Limited. _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… I have a simple postflight script in a package I've made. If I run this under 10.3.9 or 10.4.6 it works fine. Under 10.2.8 it gives an error about problems with the install (and the install fails). If I rename postflight to postinstall and also copy it to postupgrade, it works as expected (under 10.2.8 as well as 10.3.9 and 10.4.6). I tried replacing my script with one that just opens Preview.app and that has the same problem too. Anyone any ideas? I really would like my installer to work on 10.2, 10.3 & 10.4. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

1 0

Communication between Installer Plugin and script: how?
by Mike Fischer 15 May '06

15 May '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Hi! So far I have tried from the method: -(void)didExitPane:(InstallerSectionDirection)dir A) putenv() B) create a temporary file in /tmp Creating the temporary file works but there are drawbacks: Thanks! Mike _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… I'm trying to figure out the best way to communicate a user choice made in an Installer Plugin pane to one of the scripts (postflight). The function putenv() seems to have no effect on the environment in the postflight script and I see no way to transport information in this way. Am I missing something here? - I need to make sure that nobody else is using a file of the same name. I've gotten a 99.9% solution by using a UUID as the filename but it's not 100% which I'd like to have. I tried to use getenv() to get the INSTALLER_TEMP directory but the result was always null. Apparently this environment variable is not (yet) set in the context of my Installer pane. - I need to make sure that the file is deleted after use. Of cource I rm it in the postflight script and this works fine. But the user may quit the installer after my Installer pane has created the file and before the postlight script runs. Overriding -(void)dealloc on the Installer pane didn't work because apparently the pane is never deallocated. So where can I do cleanup tasks that should run when the Installer quits? Going through the headers of the InstallerPlugins.framework I didn't see any built-in mechanism for this type of communication. Is thre any other/real documentation yet? So I basically need an idea for a one way communication from the Installer Plugin pane to the postflight script (or one of the other scripts) that always works, doesn't potentially disrupt other software and safely cleans up its mess in all cases. Any help would be appreciated. PS. All of this was done on Mac OS X 10.4.6 Build 8I127 in case it matters. (And yes, my installer requires >= 10.4 and alerts the user if run on older systems.) -- Mike Fischer Softwareentwicklung, EDV-Beratung Schulung, Vertrieb Web: <http://homepage.mac.com/mike_fischer/index.html> Note: I read this list in digest mode! Send me a private copy for faster responses. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

1 0

Re: Installer on Mac
by Bill Coderre 14 May '06

14 May '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com What precisely are you trying to accomplish? _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… PackageMaker can not generate Mac OS 9-style installers. They are totally different than Mac OS X installers. It's possible for Mac OS X Installer.app to install Classic apps, but there are issues to make it tricky (resource forks, finding the Blessèd System Folder, etc). There is an SDK for the Mac OS 9 installer. I am not sure where it is on the apple developer site. It should work fine under Mac OS 9. I recall vaguely that it's tricky to get it running with Classic. On May 14, 2006, at 2:49 PM, Mike Fischer wrote: Am 14.05.2006 um 21:02 schrieb "Lieven Cardoen" <Lieven.Cardoen(a)IndieGroup.be>: Will this work on Mac Classic? (packagemaker) You probably could install things into the Classic folders on a Mac OS X system using the Mac OS X Installer.app but there might be limitations. One limitation is finding the correct folders in the first place because they may not be there at all or they may be moved or renamed. Also depending on user preference some things are stored either in global folders or Mac OS X user specific folders. (~/Library/Classic/) Apart from the user renaming the Classic System Folder it is named differently depending on localization. There is no generic file system name for a Classic System Folder. In fact there might even be multiple Classic System Folders and they need not be on the Mac OS X boot volume either. Also, this will not work for older systems booting into Classic (i.e. pre Mac OS X systems) because the Classic Apple Installer will not work with Mac OS X .pkg or .mpkg Packages. It has its own format. And I believe there is (or was) an SDK for using it. Do you really need to support Classic in this day and age? Ask yourself if it's worth the trouble. My concern is that I make cd's for educational purpose, so I guess the cd will come into hands of customers who don't have a lot of experience with computers. In this case, I assume an installer is easier... The purpose of the installer is not to go and copy files all over the system. The application can even be run from a cd, but I wish to force user to run it from harddisk because there's lot of reading sound, images, ... and running it from cd slows down the app a lot... You could offer both drag&drop installation as well as an Installer. That is if you have enough space on the CD. Microsoft Office does this for example and I think it's a good idea when you don't know what your customers prefer and your application can be installed using d&d. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

1 0

Re: FW: Installer on Mac
by Mike Fischer 14 May '06

14 May '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com HTH Mike -- Mike Fischer Softwareentwicklung, EDV-Beratung Schulung, Vertrieb Web: <http://homepage.mac.com/mike_fischer/index.html> Note: I read this list in digest mode! Send me a private copy for faster responses. _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… Am 14.05.2006 um 21:02 schrieb "Lieven Cardoen" <Lieven.Cardoen(a)IndieGroup.be>: Will this work on Mac Classic? (packagemaker) You probably could install things into the Classic folders on a Mac OS X system using the Mac OS X Installer.app but there might be limitations. One limitation is finding the correct folders in the first place because they may not be there at all or they may be moved or renamed. Also depending on user preference some things are stored either in global folders or Mac OS X user specific folders. (~/ Library/Classic/) Apart from the user renaming the Classic System Folder it is named differently depending on localization. There is no generic file system name for a Classic System Folder. In fact there might even be multiple Classic System Folders and they need not be on the Mac OS X boot volume either. Also, this will not work for older systems booting into Classic (i.e. pre Mac OS X systems) because the Classic Apple Installer will not work with Mac OS X .pkg or .mpkg Packages. It has its own format. And I believe there is (or was) an SDK for using it. Do you really need to support Classic in this day and age? Ask yourself if it's worth the trouble. My concern is that I make cd's for educational purpose, so I guess the cd will come into hands of customers who don't have a lot of experience with computers. In this case, I assume an installer is easier... The purpose of the installer is not to go and copy files all over the system. The application can even be run from a cd, but I wish to force user to run it from harddisk because there's lot of reading sound, images, ... and running it from cd slows down the app a lot... You could offer both drag&drop installation as well as an Installer. That is if you have enough space on the CD. Microsoft Office does this for example and I think it's a good idea when you don't know what your customers prefer and your application can be installed using d&d. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

1 0